


Letters to a Peacock

by russian_blue



Series: Missing Spokes on the Conversational Wheel [4]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Epistolary, F/M, Friendship, Post-Canon, Solas does not appear in this fic, Tattoos
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-24
Updated: 2016-07-24
Packaged: 2018-07-26 12:00:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,162
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7573264
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/russian_blue/pseuds/russian_blue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Once Solas made an offer and the Inquisitor refused. Now, when it's too late, she's changed her mind.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Letters to a Peacock

**Author's Note:**

> Set after Trespasser.
> 
> Fourth in a series of headcanon scenes based on narrative/conversational options I would have taken if Bioware had written them into the game.

Magister Pavus,

My apologies for imposing on your time like this, but I would be very grateful for your assistance with a certain task. I need someone to research a spell, and it's my hope that, somewhere in the libraries of Tevinter, someone has developed the magic for this.

I need to know how to remove a tattoo.

You were with me in the Crossroads, in the library. You know why I am asking.

Please let me know what you discover.

 

Verai Lavellan

*

My dearest former Inquisitor,

Why the formality? You know I will help you. It may take me some time to find a spell that will merely remove ink, rather than the skin containing it, but I am certain I can turn something up.

Merely out of curiosity -- you know I am not competitive -- have you also enquired with the inimitable Madame de Fer?

 

Dorian

*

Dorian,

You're a magister now. I don't want somebody deciding my letters shouldn't get through to you because I wasn't appropriately respectful. I don't have the weight of the Inquisition behind me anymore.

And no, I haven't asked Vivienne. Some of my companions were friends; others were merely . . . allies. The Black City will turn gold again before I admit to her what I learned out there.

 

Verai

*

My dear,

Understood. No luck so far, but my clerks have been informed that any letters from you are to be passed along to me immediately, even if you address me as "you overdressed peacock."

I'm still not used to talking about "my clerks."

I'm sure I'll find something. He can't have been the only one who ever figured out how to do such a thing.

 

Dorian

*

Dorian,

Any progress? If you don't find me a spell soon, I'm going to carve this fucking thing out of my face with a knife.

 

Verai

*

Verai,

No! No knives! I have a way to do it. I'm sending this letter because the courier can ride faster than I do, but if you will meet me in Starkhaven, I'll perform the spell for you. I am not entrusting the future of your lovely face to any mage but myself. It is a somewhat complex process, for reasons I will not bore you with -- but if you wish another mage to learn it, I would prefer to teach them in person, so bring them along if you can.

I will depart for Starkhaven immediately after dispatching this. If you show up with scars, I will be very upset.

 

Dorian

*

She's thinner than he remembers. Which ought not to be possible; more likely it is his memory that is faulty. All the same, he resolves to make some discreet inquiries. During the days of the Inquisition, she had cooks and servants and a host of meddlesome friends making sure she did not neglect to eat. Now she has fewer demands upon her time, but also fewer people looking out for her.

But there are no scabs or scars that he can see, so that is encouraging. Less so is her stiff expression, as if she can't quite bear to move her face.

Dorian has always liked her _vallaslin_. He views them purely in an aesthetic light, having no understanding of the meaning behind them, but some are quite frankly hideous -- far too busy. Hers is attractively simple. That is, of course, if one ignores its origin, and what it means to Verai today.

They're here because she can't ignore it any longer.

There's no one else with her, which troubles him. "Please do not tell me you traveled all the way from Skyhold alone," he says.

"I wasn't in Skyhold, and no, I'm not alone. One of Leliana's agents is currently providing a diversion, pretending to be me." She shrugs. "Sooner or later he'll find out I removed this . . . but I'd like to keep it secret for as long as I can."

He cannot imagine any tactical significance to whether or not the former Inquisitor and current hunter of dreadful wolves has ink on her face, except that it makes disguises more difficult. No, she's hiding this for personal reasons. Dorian cannot blame her in the slightest.

"Do you have any mage with you?" he asks. "In case there are others who might wish this done?"

"Not yet." She whispers the words; he understands them more from the movement of her lips than from any sound. Reading lips: one of the many skills a magister of Tevinter needs for survival. Reading moods, too, through body language and the subtle twitches of expression that betray what would otherwise be hidden. She's almost vibrating with tension, her remaining arm rigid at her side as if she strains to hold it back from some action. Clawing at her own face, perhaps.

He doesn't know if she'll relax after he's done, but he doubts this will make it any worse.

"Lie down," he says. The bed is frankly a little embarrassing, but Starkhaven has brothels that cater to a wide variety of tastes, and this place is used to renting out rooms for other discreet purposes. So long as he chants quietly, everyone will just assume he and Verai came here to exchange secret information.

She might as well be a plank of wood, laid out atop a coverlet embroidered with lewd figures. Dorian lays his right hand over her left eye, and Verai closes them both. Focusing his mind, he begins to chant.

It hurts when the vallaslin comes off. He knows it does, because he's the one who designed this spell; he would have liked to fix that problem, but it wasn't worth the delay. Verai doesn't even twitch. She just lies there until Dorian lifts his hand away, and her face is bare.

"Thank you," she says, and starts to rise.

He stops her with a hand on her shoulder. "Wait. My dear, I am delighted to have been able to help you, but -- is there nothing else I can do?" Bull told him about the conversation they had at the Winter Palace, before she disbanded the Inquisition. But then Dorian had to return to Tevinter, and apart from their sporadic letters, he's had no contact with her since.

She closes her eyes again. Then she opens them, and this time she actually _meets_ his gaze, looking squarely at him for the first time since she arrived here.

"Find him," she says. "Help me stop him."

Solas. A tall order -- but so was stopping Corypheus.

Dorian flinches at his own thought. Surely their old companion is not so fixed an enemy as that. Surely there is another way.

For Verai's sake, there must be.

"I have been trying," he says. Then he musters up a smile, because she needs one right now, whether she thinks so or not. She needs a life outside hunting her former lover. "Let me take you to dinner, and we will talk about that -- and many other things besides."

**Author's Note:**

> I had [what sounded at the time like good reasons](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7564801) for my Inquisitor not to have Solas remove her vallaslin . . . but after everything she learned in Trespasser, I couldn't imagine her wanting to leave the tattoo in place. Hence this fic, which isn't as much about missing options on the conversational wheel as closure for the conversations I imagined I'd had. And yeah, my Inquisitor did not get along with Vivenne very well, so Dorian was the natural choice. (Which fits in well with her having talked to Iron Bull in the last fic.)


End file.
